Pearson Education Live with Bookmaster in Korea & Taiwan
July 22, 2008
July 2008
Pearson Education, the world’s largest publisher, has gone live on schedule in Korea and Taiwan with its implementation of the IBS Bookmaster publishing software ERP system. Read more
New Amazon Kindles in October
July 21, 2008
Crunch Gear reports that new Amazon Kindle models will be released this October. The models will be lighter, slimmer and have an improved user interface in addition to being available in multiple colors.
The article also reported that Citibank analyst Mark Mahaney estimated Amazon’s kindle sales at 10,000 to 30,000 to date and forecasts possible Kindle sales of $750 million by 2010.
Mail Order Manager for Publishers
July 20, 2008
Not all book publishers use book publishing software.
A number of publishers use Mail Order Manager from Dydacomp.
Who are these publishers? and why did they choose Mail Order Manager?
1. These publishers are focused on direct mail sales, and feel that they need order management software to manage and grow their business.
“Dydacomp’s Mail Order Manager (M.O.M.)solution, is the leading integrated ecommerce and order management system available for multi-channel businesses, with nearly 10,000 clients since 1986. M.O.M. provides the total order management, order import, and order processing automation solution for your business, whether you take orders online, by phone, over-the-counter or some combination of all three.”.
2. They run a tight ship and feel that they don’t need publishing specific software as their royalty, production management, and job costing requirements are relatively simple.
3. They like the fact that they are dealing with a software solution used by nearly 10,000 companies, not a publishing specific package with a customer base of 50 to 300 publishers.
Waht we really like about MOM is their wide selection of optional modules. These include;
Amazon.com® Order Management Module
- Download Amazon orders directly to M.O.M. without double work.
- Manage and upload product details, images and much more directly from Mail Order Manager
- Synchronize online inventory availability
- Uploads shipping information to update Amazon’s online order status
- Requires M.O.M.’s Import/Export Module (IEM)
Advanced Warehouse Module (AWM)
Designed for larger order processing and fulfillment operations this module enables warehouses and warehouse service areas to be defined based on region (zones). The module also allows one person to centrally manage the activities of multiple packers working at one or several warehouse locations.
Address Correction and Verification Module (ACVM)
Reduce shipping delays, carrier imposed penalty fees and bad will that result from inaccurate address entry. Compare key-entered and imported customer shipping or mailing addresses against actual USPS® data that is updated 6 times each year. This module corrects and validates key entered orders in real time, ensuring accurate shipping addresses before an order is completed.
Auditing Book Publishers
July 16, 2008
If you are a book publisher with sales of $5M or more, or a small publisher owned by a larger company its likely that your books are audited by an outside certified public accounting firm.
To minimize this expense you need to know what they will be looking for and be prepared to answer their questions. Here are the six areas that we see auditors of book publishers focusing on; Read more
Kindle Sales Reach 12%
July 13, 2008
Publishers Weekly reported that:
“Amazon said Thursday that on a title-by-title basis, of the 130,000 titles available on Kindle and in physical form, Kindle sales now make up over 12% of sales for those titles.”
Book Publishing Company Acquisitions
July 8, 2008
Acquiring another book publishing company is the fastest way to grow your own company. The acquirer will purchase the company and eliminate duplicate staff positions. This transforms a break-even or mildly profitable publishing operation into a highly profit venture.
Example:
Pre-acquisition company A has sales of $3M, a net profit of $200K, including payroll expense of $1M a year. A 6.7% profit margin.
The acquiring company takes over order processing, marketing, operations and finance. Leaving only the editorial staff untouched and reducing payroll expenses by $600,000.
Post acquistion the company has has sales of $3M, a net profit of $800,000K, a 26% profit margin and more than enough to pay the interest on the bank loan that financed the acquisition.
Of course, the economics only hold up if the acquirer can absorb these overhead functions without substantially increasing the size of their own staff.
In one real-life case the acquirer; a $3M book publisher acquired another $3M book & journals publisher.
First, they absorbed the order fulfillment functions of the acquired company without increasing their staff by implementing an EDI system. The EDI system allowed the publish to automate the processing of orders from their major business partners; Ingram, Baker & Taylor and Barnes & Nobles to send them orders electronically.
Then they consolidated the operations by eliminating duplicated CFO and accountant positions, the marketing department, the production department and the publisher position.
Salary related expense reductions totaled about one million dollars and the acquiring book publisher was able to pay-off the loan that financed the acquistion within four years while continuing to grow the acquired company.
Publishing Company Mergers 101
July 7, 2008
The key step of any publishing company acquistion is the consolidation of order processing. The merger of order processing operations will save you money. The faster that a book publisher can achieve this the better.
Step 1: Add the acquired company’s products to your order fulfillment system’s data base. This needs to be done before stock is transferred to your main warehouse.
Step 2: Transfer about 25% of the stock of each title to your primary warehouse. You need to have this stock in place so that when you stop processing orders at the acquired company you can immediately begin shipping orders from your new warehouse.
Step 3: Notify customers of the new contact information for their orders.
Step 4: Arrange with the phone company to transfer calls to the old customer number(s) to your main customer service number; after the stock has has arrived and been checked in at your main warehouse. You want to be in a position to start filling and shipping orders when the cut-over is made.
Step 5: The final step is to stop accepting new orders at your old location and seemslessly have orders, emails and phone calls transferred to the new location and ship the remaining stock to your new location.
